A 59-year-old Seattle woman has been jailed and charged with a hate crime after months of racially charged threats culminated in her brandishing a knife at her Black neighbor.
The victim told police her neighbor had been hurling racial slurs at her for the last four to six months and on the night of Tuesday, April 10, the woman hit the victim’s door with an unknown object, according to documents obtained by SeattlePI Thursday, April 19.
“I’m going to stab you if you open the door,” the woman allegedly screamed.
The victim did open the door, however, and was greeted with a knife in the hands of the neighbor. The victim managed to head downstairs and report the incident to a front desk person, who then called the cops.
An incident report notes the front desk worker headed to the victim’s apartment and discovered the neighbor yelling, “I’m going to start stabbing people” if anyone called the manager or police.
When authorities arrived, they found the woman with a fixed-blade knife on the floor next to her foot and, according to court records, they discovered knife damage on the victim’s apartment door.
“The defendant admitted to officers that she disliked the victim because she was Black,” Senior Deputy Prosecutor Stephanie Knightlinger wrote in a bail memo.
The woman remains jailed on $50,000 bail after being charged with malicious harassment, Washington state’s hate crime statute.
